03 September Coaching Hour - What If

Introduction

Three shooters take a starring
role in this Coaching
Hour: Brian Brewton, Dick Baker and Tom Kirchmer. Brian talks about the evolution of his practice game, and how he
has overcome his demon of rushing himself while shooting. Dick talks about his
renewed commitment to practice frequently for shorter periods
of time, and Tom courageously
shares his rebound from a performance where he “stunk it up.” We also
continue to look at the voice of conscious doubt,
especially Tom’s voice that says “what if,” and how a shooting log makes a big difference.

Brian Brewton’s Journey in Practice

Gil: Starting off tonight, Brian Brewton has just
completed the complete sale of his business, and from what I understand, the check’s been cashed.
But more importantly, he also achieved
a great goal that he’s been working toward for a long time.
He said he’s had some new things
happen to him in his shooting game. Brian, do you want to talk a little bit
about that, your evolution and your practice?

Brian: Well, besides taking the pressure off
of me having to get rid of the business, I’ve also been working quite hard on
doing some of the things we’ve been talking about for so long and I just keep
working on honing those skills. And my biggest goals were to develop focus,
feel and trust. Finally
I had succumbed to the point where I started
getting out of my way and things started happening. And consequently I
went to a little tournament here a couple
weeks ago and won everything they threw at me. And that’s what I did. I was just able to focus on the
targets at hand at that moment and was able to take them out. So I just
didn’t have the voices, I wasn’t listening to anybody else.
I just had one of those
good days.

Gil: What about your practice sessions?

Brian: Like I told you earlier, I’ve been dedicated in keeping my log and I’ve been able to keep track of where
I am. And each time I go out to practice, I have my specific plan of what I
want to work on and I’ve been able to work on those aspects. It’s really mainly working on how to
handle myself, learning how to handle the pressure. Shooting the problem
targets is no problem, long targets are no problem, and the fast targets
are basically no problem. But my course is set up so I get all
kinds of targets and I’m having a really good result. Each time I’m building
more confidence in myself and how my game has matured, and I just feel like
there’s not much they can throw at me that I can’t hit. That’s where I’m at right
now.

Gil: When you practice, how much do you
shoot? Is it the same every time, or does it vary and if so, why?

Brian: Well, I generally shoot a hundred rounds. I shoot every day. The variation will be if I’ve got a target that I find I have a weak spot on
while I’m shooting. After I’m through,
I go back and work on that
target. By doing that I can pretty
well find out what is wrong;
if I was rushing the
target or if I was crowding
it or whatever. Once I
realize what it is, I can analyze it and I correct it, and that’s
the end of it. The next day I come back I don’t have that problem. I may have another
problem with something else, but I
won’t have that same problem. But
I’ve found the easiest
way to shoot a rabbit is to relax your
grip pressure. I mean hold your hand out where
it feels like it’s not
even touching the gun and you’ll be surprised how quick
that gun goes on that target. You’re not tensing up your muscles and it just explodes.

Gil: There is no gun.

Brian: Right.

Gil: Very interesting. Tell us about how you think you were
able to realize when you could
feel rushing coming
on and how you were able
to stop it.

Brian: Since January, when you told me that
rushing was killing my timing. And it’s been
something that I’ve been working with for quite some time, but I’m now
beginning to recognize when I’m picking up my pace. Once I see that that’s
going to happen, I just break open my gun, take another
deep breath and just start all over. I visualize where the targets are and where I want to
break them and I go through my complete routine. Then I close my gun, get my eyes still and call “pull.”
And it’s made a big difference in
the game.

Gil: You also mentioned to me that you’ve been working specifically on not dropping the last pair,
how did you do that?

Brian: That’s right. Just like what we were
talking about, kind of tricking yourself or challenging yourself. Saying: “Okay,
this is a match,
this next shot will put you on the podium”
and focus on the target and
let it happen.

You and I both mentioned that hard focus is hard to
beat.

Gil: Hard focus can’t be beat. You also mentioned to me earlier that
through all these things that you’ve been doing, you’ve
discovered that it’s more about focus and feel and trust.
And that your trust has been growing and
you kind of looked at confidence from
a different perspective than in the
past. It was easy for you not to worry. How
do you think that it was easier for you not to worry and just shoot them one at
a time? Do you think that’s a product of how you’ve been practicing?

Brian: I think so.
You don’t get confidence in one shot.
It’s built over a period
of time. And the more you do it, the better you can count
on it. And that’s what’s happening.

Dick Baker’s Renewed Commitment

Gil: Okay, Dick, why don’t you talk about
what you had mentioned earlier because you discovered what Brian’s discovered,
haven’t you?

Dick: Yes, somewhat I certainly have. When Brian Ash and I went to the Zone—and we shot with Brian
Brewton also—I shot all right. Just my usual
all right, but the year is pretty
well drawing to an end. And Brian and I set down in a room and popped
a cork and had a drink or two and he made this statement. He said, “You know,
I’m not shooting good either.”

He
said, “When I was really shooting good I was practicing more. I practiced all
through the week.”

As I
listened to that, a bell kind of went off and
I said, “You know, Brian, when I shot my best I practiced at least twice a
week and then shot on the weekends. But then I had this idea that I can go to American
(Shooting Center) practice
on Thursday and then go shoot a tournament
on the weekend and do well. It has not worked for either of us.”

And we
talked some more and I thought about it more and on the way home I told Brian:
“I’m going to start practicing. You’re not
going to see much of me. You can
come over if you want, but I am going to start practicing targets.”

So I
have shot every day, maybe skipping a
day when I don’t really feel up to it, but I have not skipped more than one day
in between practicing. And as I practiced, two things have happened. I haven’t
thought about lead, and I hope I never think about lead again. And focus, if
you can focus on that bird and if you can just turn yourself loose and let that
shotgun go, sometimes they break and you don’t even know it. You realize you’ve pulled the trigger and
the target breaks and that’s wonderful.

But to me I have to do repetition after repetition. I guess that’s the
way I learn, but going over to a course and shooting a hundred birds, you shoot
10 birds at a station and then move on. That just won’t get it for me. I have
got to work and work until that good feeling comes along. Just throw that bird and just break it. It’s a great feeling.

My goal
is to carry that feeling into
Nationals. I have no expectations, but it does feel good, and
I was just telling Gil about this. And another thing you mentioned was quantity.
Like one afternoon, I went down there to shoot and I shot 60 birds and I only
dropped one and I said, “Sue, we’re
going back to the house, that’s it.” It was
perfect, I felt so good. Why labor when you’re feeling good and you’ve
got that feeling? I hardly ever shoot over a hundred birds, but if you’ve had
that feeling, just quit it and go, you had it. I shot it every way it could be
shot and went to the house.

I hear
guys talking about shooting a whole flat of targets. If I shot a whole flat of
targets, the next day my neck would be so sore I wouldn’t be able to do
anything. But maybe that’s what age will do
to you. I’ve found that on
left-to-rights, my eye focus had to be much different than right-to-lefts, and all these years I’d never noticed
that. My eyes have got to be closer
to the gun on left-to-rights than on right- to-lefts. I mean that makes a
difference, but I don’t know how you’re going to learn these things without
just a lot of practice.

It sure
is a good feeling, and I wished I had done this earlier in the year.
I’ll tell you one thing, if I’m able to shoot again next year, I’ve learned a lesson. I will do my practice before tournaments. Tournaments
are great; you learn a lot, but you’ve got to get that practice time in. I was
kind of avoiding it, thought I could do without it, but I cannot.
I guess that’s the bottom line.

Gil: Well, Dick, nobody can do it without
it. We’ve been talking about practice all year and you’ve heard the CDs, everybody
has. But each person has to seek their
own level of how much practice is enough and what kind of practice is enough.

Brian: And how to practice.

Gil: Brian, what do you mean when you say that?

Practicing with Purpose
and a Log

Brian: First of all, you’ve got to have a purpose.

Gil: And when you say purpose, what do you mean?

Brian: Well you’ve got to know what you want
to work on. Because if you’re just going out there randomly shooting, you’re
not really practicing, you’re just entertaining
yourself. But you should go out there and say: “I need to work on my trust part
of the game, I need to start
focusing on the target, I need to focus on those rings, when I see the rings I need to pull the trigger”
— those are the aspects of the game that I’ve really worked hard on. Instead of
sitting up there shooting a flat of ammunition, with good quality, you can do
it in 100 rounds.

Gil: Brian, how much do you think your log
has helped you to know what to work on and possibly kept your year in
perspective?

Brian: I don’t think you could do without it.

Gil: Dick, do you keep a log?

Dick: (laughs) Since the Zone Six I do.

Gil: Wait a minute, wait a minute. I just
found out something. Now hang on guys. Listen
up to what’s happening. Brian’s
been keeping a log all year and he’s been progressing steadily. Dick is
just kind of putting his toe
in the water
… I’ll shut
up and let
you talk.

Dick: Well, I had asked Brian Ash, “Do you
keep a log?” And he said, “No, but Dad keeps telling me I’ve got to.” He said,
“You know I’m going to start one once I leave here.”

And since
then I’ve kept a log of everything I’ve done. I have found a
few things in the way I focus,
and I don’t want to forget that and I’m writing it down for no other reason.
But come next year I want to review this and remember what I’ve learned
in this month. And possibly it may help us in other
ways. They say if you want to ingrain something in your mind, write it down. So
maybe there’s more to it than me just wanting to remember it for another year.

Gil: The thing that’s very
obvious to me is that the guys who are really religious about keeping a log
progress more quickly and more steadily, and
if they have a setback it’s very, very short-lived. We’re going to talk to Tom Kirchmer about this very thing in a
minute. But that part of the discussion is very, very short-lived. I don’t care how bad the setback is, all you’ve got to do is go back to your
log, and just reading through it will help you remember things that otherwise
you would have completely forgotten. Like Dick said, you’re going to have to
learn it again, because you haven’t really
soaked it all up. And if you get as old as Dick you forget more than you learn, and if you don’t have anything to remind you,
you have to keep relearning the same things. Dick, don’t you think you are just relearning
the same things because you don’t keep a log?

Dick: Yes, and I’ve learned some new things that I
sure don’t want to forget. Everybody’s gotta learn where they want to focus,
where they want the gun in relation
to their eyes.
Those are things
I don’t want to
forget, so I feel like writing this material down ingrains it in your mind.
It has to.

Gil: I’m sure that you probably didn’t hear
me offer this, but we do have a log page that we would be more than happy to
fax to you.

Dick: Well, see coach,
you faxed that to me at the first of the year. My girlfriend Vicki did, but I just
didn’t use it, see. And now I’m using it. Another point, just remember when you
go off to shoot and you don’t shoot well, sometimes
if you just sit around with somebody
and review it, it helps.
So we just have to learn from our experiences.

Gil: Well, people who pay for our advice and
don’t use it, you know what Vicki calls that?

Dick: I have no idea.

Gil: Cash flow, baby. Cash flow. It’s a pretty good job to get paid to say
the same thing over and over again. But it’s
good to see that you’re keeping a log and that it’s working for you. I will tell you that, in my opinion, and
this is just my opinion, the fact that you’re keeping a log has had a greater
impact on the consistency and quality of your practice sessions and on your shooting than you realize
yet. And I admonish you to keep doing it. One more thing,
Dick. You mentioned to me that
you’ve been practicing a lot and you took a week-long vacation?

Dick: Oh yes, Sue finally made me take one.
Three years I’ve been promising to take her to Colorado and she bought the
tickets so I had to go. And I thought, “Damn, here it is I’ve been really
rolling along, now I gotta go take a trip for a week.” And I said, “Well, I’m
going to go practice this visualization.”

And in
that week, I really was able to do something with it. You know, I’m not as
good in a room visualizing, but I got better.
I tried it on the plane, but boy, get
up early in the morning and walk outside and
you can really do it. I shot every target,
re-shot every target of the Zone
shoot. Every morning
I did that. I came back thinking
that I’d have to
start all over, but boy, I’ll tell you what,
it was just amazing. I didn’t
lose a thing. I did not lose a thing. It has been a good experience and a good feeling
and I’ve really enjoyed it.

Gil: Well I hope that you’re an inspiration
to some people out there about keeping a log and about consistent practice and
quality practice. You don’t have to shoot a flat of ammo three times a week.
It’s more the quality of what you do. Based on our experience, one of the main
things that enable you to have a quality practice session is having a log so
you can go back and review exactly what it is that you need to work on.

Tom Kirchmer on the
Voice and Perspective

Gil: Tom?

Tom: Yes sir.

Gil: Since you’re going to say some of the same things they did, I want
you to say it all, but I want you to begin with those two tournaments that
you’re trying to forget.

Tom: Just prior to that, I’d gone to the pre-Zone shoot and won A and punched into AA, and I’d gone to the
Zone shoot and come in fourth in AA so things were going well. But I went to
this shoot on Saturday, and it was a difficult shoot, there was no question
about that, but you know, I kind of stunk it up a little bit.

Gil: What?

Tom: So I went on Sunday to another shoot that I was expecting to shoot well
at, and boy it was more than one step below “stunk it up.” And it was funny, I thought a lot about this, I don’t
think I’ve ever had two days in a
row like that. After Sunday I was driving home and I was really bottoming out.
I know it’s a game and I know the sun’s going to come up in the morning, but
boy you can really get down. And when that starts happening, the “what ifs”
start coming in. And there are a lot of what ifs. What if the wheels are coming off? Basically I let myself down, I mean, I really did, and I know it’s silly.

Gil: According to your wife you were more
than down, you were really irate.

Tom: I was. There’s no doubt about it. And I’ve got to tell you, I was having
a hard time with it. Thank God for good friends. I started getting these phone
calls, I guess the word started going around, and they made it clear that not many of them knew anybody that had gone from D to AA in less than one season.
The bottom line was: “Get over it.”

And
that was a big step. It was huge because that got me rolling. I quit wallowing in it. Then I had to
face that demon; I had to go shoot. I wanted to go shoot some targets that were
tough for me. I didn’t want to shoot cupcakes. I just had to know. And I remember driving in the car to go shoot, and it’s really funny ’cause I was listening
to the previous CD and you were talking about the what ifs and it’s amazing. “What if you don’t shoot
well today, Bubba? What if the
wheels are coming off?” I just had to deal with that, actually it kind of
ticked me off because it’s your own
brain telling you that. I mean it’s you.
What the shit is this? I mean it ticked me off. My own brain is trying to
torpedo me. Fortunately I shot really well and it seems that things are A-OK.

But it
was really kind of an amazing experience; I’ve got to tell you.

Gil: Tell them a little about when you played football and baseball and you needed to win and if you lost it
was a letdown regardless of the fact that the sun would
still rise.

Tom:That’s the thing, we talk about
all that, but I’m going
to tell you, I
went to A&M and if you lose to the University of Texas it takes a while to
get over that. It takes a long time. It’s the same with baseball games. If
it’s a big game,
you really want to win, and it knocks you down if you
don’t. And that’s the way I felt. That’s what I identified with. It was like
I lost the big game.
And you just got to pull yourself
back up and that’s sort of the way it was. It’s really funny, I was sitting
there wallowing in it
and I know the sun will come up tomorrow, I know that nobody died, nothing horrible happened. But it doesn’t
matter, you still feel horrible.

Don: At least you didn’t call Gil and tell
him to cancel you out, that you’d had enough and you were through. ’Cause God,
then he’ll ride you to death and make all sorts of jokes about it. So you did
all right.

Gil: So Tom, you stunk
it up, but this little
voice kept coming
back and saying “what
if,” but you kind of learned to put a face to it and told it to shut the hell up, right?

Tom:Boy did I learn
something. I said it a little more colorfully than that,
but I learned something, I mean, my
voice, doesn’t like confrontation. So I start
doing it when I’m shooting. Once in awhile
it will creep in. You know, you’re doing
well and there
it is, “Boy, you’re running them now … what if …” So I learned
to say, “Just shut the you know
what up.” And
it goes away. My voice doesn’t
like that. It doesn’t
like to be internally screamed at. And hopefully that will be helpful.

Gil: Okay, looking back at it, do you think going through those
two demoralizing experiences helped you in any way? And
if so, how?

Tom:I think so. I think I’m just a little bit stronger now. I think I’ve got
a better understanding of the “voice.” You guys
kept talking about it, and I sort of knew what it was, but boy do I know what
it is now, and I think I know how to confront it a little better. I just feel a little stronger
through all this.

Gil: Interesting choice of words, “to
confront it.” I think we’ve talked about this. I’ve forgotten where
I read this, but he says, “If you can put
a face to that voice,
it’s a lot easier
for you to tell it to shut up and make
it get out of the way, if you can recognize it when it comes in.” In fact, I got to tell you that Tom called and I said, “Tell me what’s going on.” He went through
what he went through with you guys, and he said, “I really need to get a lesson
from you.”

As my schedule would
have it and as the rain would
have it, I wasn’t able to meet with him. I called him after practice
and I said, “How was practice?”
And he said, “It was great.” And he began to tell me some of the things
that he’s sharing with you. And I said, “Well, just keep practicing.”

And he’s practiced and practiced. When I ask
him how his sessions are going, he says they’re going real well. He’s telling me about the voice and how he’s learning to control that. And he
said, “I feel much stronger having gone through all of that.”

I told him that I felt like it was meant
to be that Tom wasn’t able to
have a lesson from me. ’Cause you can’t always go running to Gil and Vicki. Sooner or later you’re going to have to work on adversity
on your own. And you’ve done
some things without realizing it, things that we’ve talked about and read
about, like putting a face on that voice and telling it to shut up. Is it not
amazing, Tom, how your own brain will
try to submarine your own performance?

Tom: Incredible. Like I said, as I was
driving to test it all out, it was saying, “What if you don’t shoot well today?
Then what? It’s right before Nationals!”

That is, until the point I just got
really mad. It’s you doing this to yourself. It’s crazy. And the best thing for
me to do is to confront it.

Gil: And you also said that you started looking at your log
from a different perspective.

Tom: Yeah, I did.

Gil: And understand, guys, Tom started with
Vicki and I last year. And he shot nothing but singles until what, February of
this year?

Tom: Actually until around November of last year.

Gil: Okay, then he started
shooting pairs and three weeks later he goes
and shoots an 82 at his first registered shoot and the high score is an 88. Now continue with what
you’ve discovered after you’ve been breaking phones and throwing green tomatoes
at people and saying things you shouldn’t
be saying about your coach and your wife and that
kind of stuff. Go ahead and tell them what you discovered when you went back
and reviewed your log.

Tom: It was kind of interesting. I went back and looked through it and what I noticed was, yeah there are
ups and downs, but what I really noticed was, every shoot, I had shot well.
Every single one. Then I noticed how short a period of time it really was. You’re not talking about a ton of
tournaments and you realize, “My gosh, it wasn’t that long ago that I was in D
and struggling, and I’m in AA now so get over it.” It was very helpful to me. It also shows you that there’s been other
down times. I think that if you’re a Craig Hill or a Nathan Pakish you’re pretty much shooting at the top of
your game most of the time, but when you’re just starting out it’s pretty damn hard to do that.

Brian: They have their good days and they have their bad days
too.

Gil: Everybody has bad days. And it’s not how you handle
the good days, it’s
how you handle the bad days. It’s how
you handle losing. These things are never fun to go through. Let me ask you
something Tom. Based on what you’ve
gone through this time, both you and I have agreed that it’s made you much stronger. The next time you have a poor performance, do you think
that your reaction
will differ in any way?

Tom:You know, I really think that it will. Intellectually I can say right now that I’m going to improve from that and it’s not the end of the world. I also know that I can still shoot, and I’m still going to be able to shoot after that bad
performance. I just don’t
know that I would go
down that quickly again. One bad weekend isn’t going to
put me in the dumps like that.

Gil: I will go through something that I
reviewed with somebody a couple weeks ago. I forgot who it was, but I saw them at a tournament and they shot real well the day
before and they had shot four or five stations and they weren’t shooting real
well and they were about to give up. I said, now’s the time to start trying.
Now’s the time to get back in there and be even more determined
to shoot well, to focus well, to let it happen,
and to get out of the way. Now’s the time to experiment
and see what it takes for you to come back from a poor performance. And I know
that’s hard to do.

And in
Tom’s defense, he went to a shoot at Greater Houston Gun Club, which took four
and a half to five hours to shoot a hundred targets. Not only was it poorly run
and they were using bad trap machines, they were having traps break. It was the
format they were using, it just took exceedingly long, it was exceedingly hot
and the targets were very, very difficult. So you pile all that together on
somebody that doesn’t have as much experience in this game, and you’re
susceptible to buckling pretty easy.

At the
Open on that day it rained so hard, Vicki got to the last station and she said,
“Screw it, I just want this to be over.” And
we hadn’t finished ten seconds when Mark Landry
came up and said, “This is a day when personal comfort
supercedes wanting to shoot a good score.” So there are going to be times when
you’re shooting and competing that you’re just not going to shoot well. It’s just like going into a slump. When
you feel like you’re going into a slump, the worst thing you can do is try to resist
it. Just relax
into the curve,
let it happen. Start practicing the way you particularly need to
practice and just get back to fundamentals: focus and feel and rhythm and
trust. And guys, I’m not going to quit saying this: If you don’t keep a log, I
don’t have any sympathy for you. The log is the thing that helps you keep
everything in perspective.

Tom,
how long after you stunk it up and broke a few phones and did things that were
in character but you don’t like to think of as in character for you, how long
after that did it take you to review your log? Was it after everybody called
you?

Tom: It was after everybody called me.

Gil: And if they hadn’t called you, what would have happened?

Tom: It probably would have taken me longer
to do it. I was kind of wallowing.

Gil: Kind of wallowing?

Tom: A lot wallowing.

Gil: When you were wallowing, what was the voice saying to you?

Tom:“Oh man, what if you’re in a slump? It’s just before Nationals, you don’t have time to get out of it. What
if the wheels have come off? What’s happened?” It’s amazing. It just tries to drag you down further and further. It ain’t your friend.

Best
Time to Write in the Log

Jack: I have a question about the log. When
is the optimum time to write in it? If you’re at a two-day tournament, do you write in your log
when you’re sitting in your motel the first night and then again the second night?
Or do you wait until
you’ve been home two or three days later after you’ve thought about it?
When is that optimum time to put those things down in the log?

Gil: I think you ought to do it at the end
of every session that you play with your gun. Now, obviously you don’t want to draw final conclusions on a two-day shoot after the
first day. I think it was Brian
Brewton, talking about a tournament that he shot earlier this year that he didn’t do
well on the first day. It was out at the Zone last year.

Brian: Right.

Gil: Now Jack, this was at the Zone shoot
last year, it was brutally hot and Brian went out there. Just kind of
review what you did at that shoot, Brian, and what you put in your log between
the first day and the second day. Contrast
that with what you put in your log after the shoot.

Brian: Well, I went there and had high expectations, and after the first
day I really kind of stunk things up. Once I got back to the motel and got my
logbook out, I started writing it down and realized what I was doing. I made my
goals for the next day to just go out there with no expectations, to just shoot
one target, one pair at a time and have a good shoot. Consequently things that
day did click and I had a good score. I did really well. So it helps you keep on track.

Gil: Now contrast that with what you wrote in your log after
the shoot was over. Do you remember?

Brian: No.

Gil: Okay, well I would tell you Jack Parker, that we recommend you write in that log after every time you play with that shotgun.
Here’s the reason: by writing
in that log, you’re keeping track of how you ate, how you slept, if it’s a practice session, what you went out
to work on specifically. And that’s drawn from what you needed to work on after
you shot your last tournament.

For
instance, the entry before says: “I need to work on dropping teal that have a right-to-left slide to them from 30 to 35 yards because I
didn’t do well on that and I need to improve.” In fact, what you might want to do is write in your log
before you practice. Write down your eating, your drinking, your sleeping and
what the goal for the practice
session was. You put your logbook
down. You’re focused in purpose. You go out and you have quality practice sessions.

Like Dick said, it doesn’t
matter whether it’s 50 birds or 150 birds,
it’s quality practice which
improves the overall quality of your practice, number one. And then when you get through
with that practice
session, you put your gun in the gun case, you get in your truck with the heater or
air conditioner on and write down how it felt. Write down: “I did this
well today. I focused well today. I felt good today even though I didn’t get in a good night’s rest or because I ate a different
thing for lunch.”

It’s just a
recipe book for how you perform when you get a
certain amount of sleep or when you eat certain things,
and it’s a reflection on your whole day with the shotgun as well as specific reflections on what you did well
and what you need to work on. And you will find that every time you touch that
gun, if you go to shoot your 50 birds, if you go to shoot your league, when you
get done, you write in the log how you felt. The more you do that,
the more you have a true reflection of what’s really there.
Because without a log, without
a true commitment to look at your game for what it really is, you only
remember the poor performances. You get caught up in the web that Tom Kirchmer got caught up in. This guy
had two bad shoots back to back and he’s losing it, after all he accomplished in such a short time. And Tom, it’s easy for
that voice to get in, isn’t it?

Tom: Oh man, and it’s pretty loud too.

Gil: Pretty loud?

Tom: It’s screaming at you.

Gil: Now I would tell you that maybe the next
time you encounter this problem, one of the first places
you should go is to your log, rather
than wallowing. You see what Brian Brewton did at the
Zone shoot a year before last. And Brian, wasn’t it in reviewing what you had written in your log that day, that you discovered the root of the problem was expectation?

Brian: Absolutely.

Gil: And it’s okay to review this log.
Review it every four or five times you touch the gun, Jack. And halfway through
the year, review your log.

You listen to the
CDs from before tonight. You listen
to where we talk about that log. You will
be astonished at what a creature of habit you are when it comes to sleep and
the times and amounts you do things. Number
two, you will be astonished at how obvious the strengths and the weaknesses of your game
are. And in knowing that, it allows you to increase the quality of your practice
sessions, which means you don’t have to have so much quantity if you’ve got quality. Now I'm not telling
you that you don’t have to practice
a lot. But I think you could ask Dick Baker or Tom or anybody else that’s on the curve
here, it’s the frequency and the quality
of the practice, not the quantity of the practice that’s crucial.
And in my opinion, there’s no way anybody
can know how to get the proper combination of those things without keeping a
log. Do you agree with that, Dick?

Dick: Yes.

Gil: How about you, Brian?

Brian: Yep.

Gil: Tom?

Tom: Absolutely.

Dick: I had one other thing come to mind when Tom was talking on
self-talk, when he was talking about that voice. This may sound ridiculous, but
you know I’ve got several names, I’ve gone by my initials, I’ve gone by Dick.
But I had an old marine friend, and when he said Richard … goddamn, things were
serious. And I want to tell you, when I say “Richard” and talk to it … if you
really want to get rid of that voice, pick out what your mother always
called you. Dick to me is just a
friendly name, but when you call me Richard, things
are getting serious. And I find this really helps.

Gil: Well, that goes back to what I was saying a while ago. If you’ll just put
a name and a face to that voice.

Dick: Yep. Talk to your voice by using a name
in your life that really means something.

Gil: That’s a tremendous value because you
can’t hope to control something if you don’t know what it is. Although we’ve
said this many times, Tom, I think
has really finally understood what we say when
we say, the voice of conscious doubt will take many faces.

Tom: I’ve thought about that phrase
throughout all this and it’s interesting because it does.

Gil: And it will take any avenue
to get in and submarine
your performance. It will even
be overly positive, which in turn,
is doubt. See what I mean? When you become overly
confident—for instance: “I’ve got to practice every day; I’ve
got to practice a lot because
I’ve got a big
shoot coming up” That could
be doubt. Practicing up to the day before the shoot. Now practice
in and of itself is not a bad thing,
but it is when you think
you have to practice up until the last day before the shoot begins. That sounds
to me like the voice of conscious doubt. It just occurs to me, this guy is even more clever than you are. He is even more clever than you are, because he can get inside your head and you don’t want him there. And it’s like Dick said. If you can put a name on it or a
face on it, it’s so much easier to control. It’s an amazing thing.

Jack: Thanks a lot guys, that helps.

Gil: Good. And you have been keeping a log right?

Jack: Yes, but not with practice or league. Just with tournaments, and that’s going to change tomorrow.

Gil: Good, can you not see the benefits
of doing it every time you touch the gun?

Jack: Absolutely.

Gil: Good, you don’t want to draw any
tournament conclusions on the night of the first day. But you can certainly go
and write in your log about what you did well and what you need to work on. And
if you need to make a mental change or a mechanical change for the next day, go
ahead and make it and at the end of the shoot, go back and say: “Well, I caught
it halfway through. It didn’t take both days of stinking it up to figure it
out.”

Brian
had a huge victory by changing what needed to be changed on the second day,
simply because he was able, through writing in his log, he was able to focus on
what the problem was midway through the shoot. And he was able to come back and
correct that. I feel personally that when you’re able to do that, it makes it
easier for you to not have that expectation on the first day of the next shoot
you go through.

Brian: Yeah, that’s
correct.

Gil: Keeping this log thing is kind of like
visualization. It’s silly. You don’t
have to make any sacrifices. It doesn’t take a lot of time. It’s just
silly. But it is one of the greatest
tools that you can have to enhance your performance. If you have a good ability
to use visualization and you are constantly and truthfully writing in your log,
I have to believe that your game will improve. But more importantly, your game
will improve because your practice sessions
will improve. And I will tell you this again: I ain’t going to change
my mind. We’ve seen it happen too much.

Vicki
and I don’t keep a log because we don’t go to tournaments. We only go to two or three tournaments a year, but we are constantly writing down
what we learn when we teach. We learn
something new every day, and I’ll
take a note card and write down what I learned today. We’re constantly evaluating our teaching
skills and our ability to analyze a student’s problem and get to
the solution, provided they’re willing to accept the solution. Just simply
being willing to write it down, makes it more a part of you. I am going to talk
to Mick Howell in San Antonio in the next week and see if he’ll come back. I’m
also going to talk to Craig Hill and Nathan Pakish and ask them the same thing.
Good night.

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